Wealthy businessman keeps to mom’s advice

Halifax businessman Mickey MacDonald announced Monday that he was donating $1 million to start a foundation for at-risk youth.

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When he’s not driving his Bentley, Mickey MacDonald can always slum it in a Ferrari.

Or the tough-guy entrepreneur can get behind the wheel of one of the 18 other luxury cars he owns.

Don’t be fooled though. Tooling through Halifax, he’s not just another rich guy keeping track of his business holdings.

MacDonald, who on Monday announced that he was donating $1 million to start a foundation for at-risk youth, knows from experience how hard the city streets can be.

He understands what it’s like to be 16-year-old dropout from Fairview, sleeping in bus shelters, abandoned cars and under park benches throughout Ontario and British Columbia.

He remembers the hunger of going days — and, once, a week — without food.

And that sometimes, in a world where the weak are too often prey for the strong, there’s nothing to do but fight.

“Hunger and survival can be great motivators,” he said in an interview Monday. “You do what you have to do.”

That credo has helped turn the ex-street kid into one of the city’s ascendant businessman. After making an estimated $50 million when he sold DownEast Communications to Aliant in 2004, he’s branched out.

MacDonald owns a chunk of prime Spring Garden Road retail real estate — once home to Mills Brothers, the high-end ladies shop that he sold off — as well as the fabled Chickenburger franchise.

His holdings include Harvest Wines and Spirits, one of four private specialty liquor stores in the province, as well as a range of other interests.

MacDonald is also a major shareholder in Clearwater Fine Foods Inc., the Halifax shellfish giant he and his brother Colin founded with John Risley.

But he’s never forgotten where he came from. The businessman, who fought inside and outside the boxing ring as a young man, still likes to lace on the gloves for daily workouts at the fitness centre he owns.

MacDonald also tries to follow the wisdom of his mother, a nurse from outport Newfoundland who raised seven children alone after her husband took sick, who advised her kids to “always give back.”

He and his brother Colin give generously to a host of youth-oriented charities, including Phoenix Youth Programs and Special Olympics.

In 2007, MacDonald donated $300,000 toward Halifax West High School’s community theatre, which is named after his mother Bella and daughter Rose.

A year later, MacDonald opened Palooka’s Boxing Club, meant to provide free and accessible boxing and martial arts programs for inner-city youth.

“The problem was that it was too much of a gym for the professional fighters,” said MacDonald, who closed the facility last year. “The youth were intimidated and frightened off.”

MacDonald, though, was still seeking a way to give the kids “a hand up rather than handout.”

Enter Palooka’s Charitable Foundation, started with $1 million in seed money from MacDonald’s stable of companies.

In years to come, he plans to pour more money into the foundation, which has already provided funding for a range of organizations, including Chefs for UNICEF, the Learning Disabilities Association of Nova Scotia and Chisholm Services for Children, which offers early intervention for youths facing neglect or abuse.

MacDonald concedes he has an ulterior motive for creating the foundation. His sons Colin, 32, and John, 21, and his 18-year-old daughter Rose all sit on the foundation’s board. (MacDonald, 61, also has a 10-month-old daughter.)

“They’re good workers, but let’s face it, they have pretty privileged lives,” he said. “We all try to protect our kids. But I want to expose them a bit to the reality of the world.”

It’s not always pretty. But once you see it, their father will tell them, you never forget.